7 Job Search Time Wasters and How to Avoid Them

1. Surfing the internet

Thanks to Google, we’ve got the whole world at our fingertips. Need to know what happened to the lead singer of that obscure 90s band? It’s just a few clicks away! But just because we have access to this information doesn’t mean we really need it. And it certainly doesn’t mean we need it while we’re in the middle of writing a cover letter.

If your crack is the Google search (ditto for Facebook, Myspace and Twitter), you really need to go cold turkey, at least for a few hours a day. A friend of mine takes his laptop to a coffee shop without an Internet connection – and he’s amazed by how much more he gets done.

Save some of the job descriptions you’re interested in, and then disconnect. Without the temptation to research the origin of Graham Crackers (or catch up on your friends’ status updates), you will be free to focus on revamping your resume and preparing various targeted cover letters, which you will then save offline and send out, en masse, once you are reconnected.